'Thursday Till Sunday' Named Best Movie at Valdivia Film Fest

VALDIVIA, Chile -- Latin American cinema swept the Valdivia International Film Festival, as local Dominga Sotomayor's Thursday Till Sunday won best film in the international competition. A winner in this year's Rotterdam competition that stars Santi Ahumada and Emiliano Freifeld, the film was one of the two Chilean entries in the program.

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Argentine Matias Piñeiro's Viola, a delicate and sensual Shakesperean tale set in contemporary Buenos Aires, won the special jury prize.

The international competition jury -- Argentine producer Violeta Bava, Peruvian programmer John Campos Gomez and Chilean filmmaker Ignacio Aguero -- also gave out two special mentions: to Julio Hernandez Cordon's Locarno entry Polvo and Helena Klotz's Atomic Age.

The Chilean competition was topped by Carlos Klein's Donde vuelan los condores, while Ignacio Rodriguez's La chupilca del diablo won the section's special jury prize and Fernando Guzzoni's Dog Flesh got the Movie City Award, a $25,000 pre-purchase by the channel. The section's jury was formed by actress-writer Romina Paula (who also starred in Viola), writer-filmmaker Alberto Fuguet and producer/journalist Pablo Udenio.

Uruguayan film El Bella Vista, directed by Alicia Cano, picked up the audience award in the international competition.

Claudia Huaiquimilla's San Juan won the local short competition. The short, which had also won the same category at the Santiago Film Festival two months ago, is set in Huaiquimilla's mapuche community and taps the issue of deforestation through a native ritual celebration.

The Valdivia International Film Fest kicked off on Oct. 2 and closes Sunday night with a screening of Winter, Go Away!, a collective film about social protests in Russia directed by 10 young local filmmakers and produced by Marina Razbezhkina.